Troubles In Turkey

[Simon Tan]

Sultan has written hemself into a corner with PKK.

[Panzermann]

Sultan has written hemself into a corner with PKK.

I think to get CHP on his side. They hate the kurdish people for being so stubborn to insist on their own identity.

[urbanoid]

Not just CHP, all main parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) and their electorate have little to no warm feelings when it comes to the Kurds.

[Simon Tan]

Unfortunately they really need to return to a ceasefire with PKK. Right now, they are engaged in a campaign that brings them nothing when they need to space and time to restructure. Many of their 'elite' units are now suspect and have been stood down, leaving indifferent conscript units to bleed in the SE. Unfortunately that is going to take something really big after the brutal campaign intended to win 'popular' support engineered by Ahmed Pasha playing on Sultan's ego and propensities. The best play is to blame it all on Ahmed pasha, FETO and buy time because the current 'direction' absolutely means that Team Sunni will be at odds with Sultan.

[Panzermann]

Doesn't look like the Erdogang is going to reduce pressure on the Kurds. Recently they started renaming cities and towns to "proper turkish names" and renaming counties(?) and redrawing district borders and such to turkify the area once again.

[Markus Becker]

Not just CHP, all main parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) and their electorate have little to no warm feelings when it comes to the Kurds.

But one would expect the other parties to at least realize that the Kurds are not the last item on the AKP's "to supress" list.

[Panzermann]

 

Not just CHP, all main parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) and their electorate have little to no warm feelings when it comes to the Kurds.

But one would expect the other parties to at least realize that the Kurds are not the last item on the AKP's "to supress" list.

"...when they came for me, there had been nobody left to protest"

Edited August 22, 2016 by Panzermann

[urbanoid]

 

Not just CHP, all main parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) and their electorate have little to no warm feelings when it comes to the Kurds.

But one would expect the other parties to at least realize that the Kurds are not the last item on the AKP's "to supress" list.

 

 

The Kemalists have been suppressing both Kurds and (less so) Islamists for decades.

 

Now we have (sort of) Islamists suppressing both Kurds and the Kemalists.

 

Both parties are nationalist to the bone, despite one of the them being somewhat socialist and the second - somewhat islamic.

[Markus Becker]

BTW, what was the kid carrying? 54 dead indicates a "pretty good" bomb. The IS Illegal only killed himself in Ansbach.

[Cinaruco]

Does anyone if the theory that Russia warned the Sultan has any credence? I still say Erdogan threw an autogolpe (putsch)... Still curious though.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Andres Vera

[BansheeOne]

Apparently the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople plotted the coup along with the Gulen movement on behalf of the CIA. Why, you ask? Obviously because Patriarch Bartholomaios saw his Russian rival for global leadership of the Orthodox faith strengthened by Erdogan's recent rapproachment with Putin, d'uh. And both Gulen and Bartholomaios are of course CIA agents. So says the former US ambassador to Yemen, Arthur Hughes in various statements reported on Russian website pravoslavija.ru and others. Well, in fact Ambassador Hughes has said he never made those statements and they were wrongly attributed to him, but would you believe some lying American? Damn right, which is why Turkish daily "Aksam", owned by an associate of Erdogan, ran the story on its frontpage today.

 

Does Turkey need Patriarch Bartholomew?

At least since Mustafa Kemal’s time, Orthodox Christians in Turkey have witnessed repressions from the state. Thousands of Turkish-tongue Christians had to emigrate. In 1971, the Halki theological seminary was closed down. The dissemination of orthodox literature and missionary activities of any kind are banned. In an attempt to foster patriotism and obtain a wider support of the conservative part of society, the Turkish government tried to build relations with nationalists, most radical of whom even made several attempts at Patriarch Bartholomew!

It’s no wonder that such a situation induced the Patriarchate to establish close ties with the American political elite. Congregations in the US and the donations from American businesspersons of Greek origin are the main sources of income for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In its turn, Washington considers the condition of religious minority in Turkey an ace in the diplomatic game to put pressure upon Ankara. Moreover, being primus inter pares among the heads of the other Autocephalous Churches, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople can affect the whole Orthodox world. And, obviously, the US intelligence couldn’t have missed such a chance.

Thus, one of the members of the American-Israeli lobby in the Constantinople Patriarchate is Father Alexander Karloutsos, Public Affairs Officer close to Archbishop Demetrios. Thanks to his ties with high-level officials and Greek-American billionaires, he is basically the only person who controls the money flows from the US to the Phanar, and that gives him wide possibilities of exerting pressure upon the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On the other hand, Fr. Karloutsos is also in good relations with former CIA Director George Tenet, and with the preacher Fethullah Gülen cooperating with the American intelligence. That means the amount of financing is directly bound to how successfully the Patriarchate’s heads accomplish the tasks they receive from their US supervisors.

Besides that, Patriarch Bartholomew personally has met with Gülen, or Hoca Efendi, as he calls him, quite a number of times. For instance, they met on 6 April 1996 to discuss the prospects of interfaith dialogue. This was before Gülen fled to the US with the assistance of the diplomat Morton Abramovitz, CIA agents Graham Fuller and George Fidas, and the above-mentioned Fr. Alexander Karloutsos.

The Patriarch of Constantinople praised Gülen in 2012 when he took part in a meeting of Journalists and Writers’ Association (GYV) founded by the Turkish preacher. About a month before the event, the Chicago Tribune published an interview with Bartholomew in which he highly appreciated Gülen’s efforts to develop interfaith dialogue and foster intimacy among faiths “for the benefit of humankind.” Then, a week past the Association’s meeting, on 13 May 2012 in an interview dedicated to the award Bartholomew received from Roosevelt Institute, the Patriarch publicly mentioned his friendship with Hoca Efendi: “We really love him. We hope he comes back soon.” Should anyone wonder than why the Patriarch of Constantinople touched upon the inadmissibility of Muslim services in Hagia Sophia only on 11 July – a month after they had begun – and just 4 days before the attempted coup?

Does the Turkish government realize its failure after the recent coup attempt? Would they try to win the Orthodox patriarch over or crackdown on him? Obviously, it would be much easier for Erdogan to cut off the foreign financing of the tiny Turkish Orthodox community to get rid of it for good. On the other hand, the cooperation with its own Orthodox Patriarch could give Turkey new possibilities to improve its reputation and expand its influence in the Orthodox world. Should the authorities recognize the Ecumenical status of the Patriarchate of Constantinople at last?

Unfortunately, it would be extremely hard to ground such a decision at this moment. Instead of consolidating Orthodox Churches, the Council held in June on Crete simply alienated them. We saw Patriarch Bartholomew incapable of uniting the Orthodox world. Moreover, it turned out that his influence doesn’t affect even a half of Orthodox Christians! The reasons are his authoritarianism, pertinacity and hostility towards the Russian Orthodox Church.

Such a fact diminishes the Patriarchate’s value for those in power in Turkey. And Patriarch Bartholomew seems to have not that much time to attempt to change the situation.

Amb. Arthur Hughes is the career American diplomat, former United States Ambassador to Yemen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asia, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. Currently he is a Scholar at the Middle East Institute, board member of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs.

 

http://www.therussophile.org/does-turkey-need-patriarch-bartholomew.html/

 

Will Ankara take aim at Patriarch Bartholomew? [unpublished]

DISCLAIMER: All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of EurActiv.com PLC.

17. Aug. 2016 (updated: 12:46)

NOTE: EurActiv has unpublished this article following confirmation that the author was a fake. We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused at a challenging time for Turkey and have taken measures to strengthen our internal processes as a consequence.

 

http://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/opinion/will-ankara-take-aim-at-patriarch-bartholomew/

 

Order of St. Andrew condemns fraudulent, dangerous articles targeting His All-Holiness

New York, NY

8/25/2016

The Order of St. Andrew, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate today condemned recent attempts to threaten the well being of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew through the posting of fraudulent articles online under the name of Ambassador Arthur Hughes. Ambassador Hughes had nothing to do with their content and has been working with the Archons to remove such posts and inform others that they are not his work.

In mid-august, Oriental Review Magazine published online an article titled "Does Turkey Need Patriarch Bartholomew?" supposedly written by Ambassador Hughes. The article described His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as having close ties to Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish religious leader (who lives in the US), who Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has accused of being the leader of the recent failed military coup in Turkey. Following the protest of Ambassador Hughes, the article was taken down.

On August 17 Euractiv.com published a second spurious article wrongly attributed to Ambassador Hughes, making similar accusations, titled "Will Ankara Take Aim at Patriarch Bartholomew?"

National Commander Limberakis strongly condemned such efforts on behalf of the Order. "Not only are these articles fraudulent, they are dangerous attempts to disparage His All-Holiness. We call on all media outlets to more responsibly confirm the source of articles submitted with regard to His All-Holiness."

Below is the message from Ambassador Arthur H. Hughes:

On August 16, 2016, an organization known as Oriental Review, www.orientalreview.org, placed on its website an article concerning the Patriarch of Constantinople and attributed it to me. I can state categorically that I did not write this article, contribute it to Oriental Review, nor do I have any knowledge of the statements alleged in the article. Mr. Andrey Fomin, Founding Editor of Oriental Review, has acknowledged by email that they did not verify whether I in fact had sent the article, expressed regret and removed it from their website. Despite my repeated requests to Mr. Fomin, Oriental Review has not posted a statement indicating that the article in question and my alleged authorship were indeed a fabrication.

Arthur H. Hughes

United States Ambassador (Retired)

 

http://www.archons.org/news/detail.asp?id=917

 

CIA WORKS WITH CLERIC BLAMED FOR TURKISH COUP AND WITH PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW, SAYS US AMBASSADOR

The former US ambassador to Yemen, Arthur Hughes, has revealed the close links between the CIA and Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, who has been blamed by the Turkish president for the recent coup plot, and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul), Bartholomew.

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2016/08/20/us-botschafter-zu-tuerkei-putsch-guelen-ist-ein-mann-der-cia/

http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/geostrategie/f-william-engdahl/fuehrende-us-geostrategen-raeumen-amerikanische-beteiligung-am-putschversuch-in-der-tuerkei-ein.html

http://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/opinion/will-ankara-take-aim-at-patriarch-bartholomew/

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/96286.htm

The information confirms the notion that Gulen spearheaded a coup on behalf of the CIA to depose Turkey’s leader Recept Erdogan after Erdogan agreed to work more closely with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Syria, and that the Greek Orthodox Church has been captured by the CIA, which in turn works for Globalists.

Hacked documents and emails have revealed the extent of the influence of Billionaire George Soros on Hilary Clinton when she was Secretary of State and US ambassadors like Geoffrey Pyatt in the Ukraine.

A Greek Orthodox priest belonging to the Patriarchate, Alexander Karloutsos, helped organize the escape of Gulen to the USA in 1999 together with US diplomats Morton Abramowitz, the CIA agents Graham Fuller and George Fidas.

Karloutsos, who had close links to former CIA boss George Tenet, channels vast sums of money from US Greek billionaires into the Orthodox church in Istanbul.

“It’s no wonder that such a situation induced the Patriarchate to establish close ties with the American political elite. Congregations in the US and the donations from American businesspersons of Greek origin are the main sources of income for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In its turn, Washington considers the condition of religious minority in Turkey an ace in the diplomatic game to put pressure upon Ankara. Moreover, being primus inter pares among the heads of the other Autocephalous Churches, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople can affect the whole Orthodox world. And, obviously, the US intelligence couldn’t have missed such a chance.

Thus, one of the members of the American-Israeli lobby in the Constantinople Patriarchate is Father Alexander Karloutsos, Public Affairs Officer close to Archbishop Demetrios. Thanks to his ties with high-level officials and Greek-American billionaires, he is basically the only person who controls the money flows from the US to the Phanar, and that gives him wide possibilities of exerting pressure upon the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On the other hand, Karloutsos is also in good relations with former CIA Director George Tenet, and with the preacher Fethullah Gülen cooperating with the American intelligence. That means the amount of financing is directly bound to how successfully the Patriarchate’s heads accomplish the tasks they receive from their US supervisors,” writes Hughes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2016 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

 

https://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/cia-works-with-cleric-blamed-for-turkish-coup-and-with-patriarch-bartholomew-says-us-ambassador/

 

31.08.2016 Author: F. William Engdahl

Top USA National Security Officials Admit Turkey Coup

While the Obama Administration and the CIA officially cling to the fig leaf lie that US intelligence was innocent of any involvement in the failed July 15 coup d’ etat attempt by the CIA-run Fethullah Gülen organization in Turkey, the truth is coming out from senior US intelligence insiders themselves. It reflects a huge internal faction struggle within US leading circles in what by all accounts is shaping to be the most bizarre Presidential election year in American history.

The first admission that US intelligence had their hand in the anti-Erdogan coup, a coup launched just days after Erdogan announced a major strategic shift away from NATO and towards Russia, came from Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski is one of the most senior members of the US intelligence establishment, a former Obama Presidential adviser and former National Security Council architect of the Jimmy Carter 1979 Mujahideen Afghanistan terror operations against the Soviet forces in that country.

[...]

Brzezinski’s candid critique was followed up by an even more detailed expose of US intelligence ties to Fethullah Gülen, charged by the Turkish government with treason and backing the July 15 coup. In a guest article in the EU online mgazine EurActiv.com dated 17 August, 2016, Arthur H. Hughes confirms the intimate links between Gülen and the CIA, noting that “Gülen fled to the US with the assistance of the diplomat Morton Abramovitz, CIA agents Graham Fuller and George Fidas, and the above-mentioned Fr. Alexander Karloutsos.”

Gülen CIA friend Bartholomew I

Hughes’ article is a bombshell in many respects, and most definitely in his detailing of the intimate ties between the CIA, Gülen and the current Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, current Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch. Hughes described the above-mentioned Father Alexander Karloutsos:

“…one of the members of the American-Israeli lobby in the Constantinople Patriarchate is Father Alexander Karloutsos, Public Affairs Officer close to Archbishop Demetrios (of America-w.e.). Thanks to his ties with high-level officials and Greek-American billionaires, he is basically the only person who controls the money flows from the US to the Phanar (the Greek Orthodox part of Istanbul-w.e.), and that gives him wide possibilities of exerting pressure upon the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On the other hand, Karloutsos is also in good relations with former CIA Director George Tenet, and with the preacher Fethullah Gülen cooperating with the American intelligence.”

George Tenet, a close ally of the Clinton political machine is a Greek-American former head of CIA during the time of Bill Clinton and also George W. Bush. The Clintons are both on record praising Fethullah Gülen. It seems to be a cozy network of CIA-Gülen-Constantinople Patriarchate-Clintons, all financed with “money from Greek-American billionaires.”

Arthur H. Hughes is not a casual commentator on events in Turkey and the Middle East. He was US Ambassador to Yemen in the 1990’s during the Clinton Presidency, then Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asia, and was Deputy Chief of Mission in Tel Aviv. His linking of Gülen to the CIA and to the Constantinople Patriarchate points to one of the least-public and most influential covert CIA-run networks in the world, the anti-Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate of Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. Hughes suggests that if Erdogan and the Turkish government are serious about dealing with future coup threats, they should put the Constintanople Patriarchate under the magnifying glass.

[...]

 

http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/31/top-usa-national-security-officials-admit-turkey-coup/

 

It's a beautiful example for a Russian-style info warfare campaign, though I'm not sure if it was indeed orchestrated by Russia. I'm gonna cross-post it to the relevant thread at any rate. As an aside, between this and the story that the US allegedly removed its nukes from Incirlik to a Romanian airbase which happens to have neither a special weapons vault nor indeed a functional runway since a missile defense site was built on top of it, this has put euractiv.com on my list of deliberate or unwitting outlets for such campaigns.

Edited August 31, 2016 by BansheeOne

[Soren Ras]

It's a beautiful example for a Russian-style info warfare campaign,

Indeed it is.

 

though I'm not sure if it was indeed orchestrated by Russia.

Seems highly unlikely anyone else would be proficient enough not just to hit the usual notes but also do it using some of the usual Russian outlets.

 

--

Soren

[Mike Steele]

Its a CIA plot!

[Panzermann]

Its a CIA plot!

The reports are wrong of course. The patriarch is an agent from Mossad indisputedly.

 

 

Somehow the writing style of these pieces always rubs me in wrong way. I cannot really point to what exactly it is.

[Panzermann]

Turkish soldiers and their families stationed at NATO air forces HQ at Ramstein AFB in Germany have filed applications for asylum because of political persecution in their home country.

The soldiers and their families are regularly scheduled to be transferred back to Turkey.

 

 

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/tuerkische-nato-soldaten-stellen-asylantrag-in-deutschland-14530886.html(Frankfurter Allgemeine, in german of course)

Edited November 16, 2016 by Panzermann

[Jeff]

So, any guesses on the "elect me a dictator" election in Turkey? Any guesses on voting shenanigans?

[Markus Becker]

The regime is reportedly trying to deny observers access to the vote counting.

 

75% of the votes are counted, Yes leads by 53% but the more votes are being counted, the more the lead of the Yes camp is getting. BTW, 63% of Truks living in Germany voted Yes and the recently appointed German president is warning the French not to vote for Le Pen. Well done you ...

[Jeff]

The regime is reportedly trying to deny observers access to the vote counting.

 

75% of the votes are counted, Yes leads by 53% but the more votes are being counted, the more the lead of the Yes camp is getting. BTW, 63% of Truks living in Germany voted Yes and the recently appointed German president is warning the French not to vote for Le Pen. Well done you ...

 

Authoritarians don't lose elections.

[Markus Becker]

This one is likely to "win" by a 51% margin.

[Jeff]

This one is likely to "win" by a 51% margin.

I've felt from the beginning that the vote counting standard was going to be "whatever it takes".

[Marek Tucan]

I guess the Turks in Germany just want to punish the old country? Certainly looks that way.

[bojan]

No, thet is "Munich Brigade*" syndrome where those that ran away screaming from the old country suddenly became more "patriotic" than those left behind.

 

*Popular name during Yugoslav wars for those that were cheering for some of the factions from a safety of the western Europe.

[Marek Tucan]

51.4% apparently

[Markus Becker]

I guess the Turks in Germany just want to punish the old country? Certainly looks that way.

The Sultan is most popular in the backw.. err rural areas. Guess where the Turks living here came from?

[seahawk]

Rise of an Empire. Great day for Turkey.